Daniel Lakeland

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@dlakelan

Applied Mathematician, Julia programmer, father of two amazing boys, official coonhound mix mutt-walker.

PhD in Civil Engineering. Debian Linux user since ca. 1994.

Bayesian data analysis iconoclast

Github: https://github.com/dlakelan
OpenWrt: https://forum.openwrt.org/u/dlakelan/preferences/profile

Public Key

npub1fnejmanw24sxweer9t5ncla5v5ekdf6mvtwnjmkm7em6vxjnxf6swp87ll

NIP-05 Address

dlakelan_at_mastodon.sdf.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsyeued7eh92cr8vu3j46fu076x2vmx5adk9hfedmdlvaaxrffnyagprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnswf5k6ctv9ehx2aql922a5

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relay.momostr.pink

relay.primal.net

relay.damus.io

Author Public Key

npub1fnejmanw24sxweer9t5ncla5v5ekdf6mvtwnjmkm7em6vxjnxf6swp87ll

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Last Notes

2026-10-08 21:20:50 UTC

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Or just excessive caffeine? Is there a difference?

2026-10-08 20:00:29 UTC

How do people with Corgis keep from getting a second dog and naming it Bess?

2026-10-06 21:47:01 UTC

YAAAAAS!!!!
#guix peeps. My #anarchistuniversity server is ONLINE with its strange stack of LVM + Cache + LUKS + btrfs raid.
The workaround was to create a shepherd service which depends on user-processes which simply does vgchange and cryptsetup manually at a later time. Then make /mnt/home depend on that shepherd process and guix can mount this home directory volume. It's a bit hacky but it lets me move on to working on the next problem of getting a container set up to run Yunohost.

2026-10-04 19:25:12 UTC

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He advocated that the wise philosopher kings should run everything to the benefit of everyone else. He wasn't so much a Fascist as a neoliberal technocrat. which is just fascism plus bunnies or some shit
@npub1n7k…7g0f

2026-10-04 00:46:41 UTC

The dogs are melting down and its still 95F out. Send help.

2026-10-03 22:53:28 UTC

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He said it was OK, not great, he might not get it again. But he drank the whole thing and then safely disposed of the empty cup outside so as to not set off any emergency gas leak response protocols in any of the buildings 🤣

2026-10-03 22:53:27 UTC

We went into the very Asian boba restaurant north of PCC, and ordered a passion fruit boba smoothie and a durian boba smoothie.
The Asian lady behind the counter was like "absolutely not" she wasn't gonna let my son have a durian smoothie. So anyway he had to convince her to bring him a sample of the frozen fruit slurry so he could taste and smell it. He finally gave his approval and she reluctantly let him have it.

2026-10-03 16:46:47 UTC

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In 11th grade I was in the honors English class, we read a number of books through the year... including for example
Huck Finn, The Scarlett Letter, A Faulkner Novel I can't remember which, Beloved, The Sun Also Rises, Native Son, and others I dont even remember. Maybe 4 or 5 other novels.
So, in 2 semesters let's call that 32 weeks we read say 10 books. So maybe a novel every 3 weeks. It was a fast pace, I think for an avg audience maybe a novel every 5 weeks. But Half a novel in 7 weeks?

2026-10-03 16:36:17 UTC

Its been like 7 weeks of school and Alex is still reading Catcher in the Rye at school. This is the first book for the class. They are about halfway through. The teacher reads the book to the kids in class. Alex believes this is because a significant fraction of 10th graders can't read at the required level to read the book themselves in a reasonable time period.
At this pace maybe 12 or 14 weeks to read the one book... I'm pretty sure Alex finished it in about 2. What does this say about us?

2026-10-03 15:50:28 UTC

I'm in a parking lot and theres a political yard sign that has some guys face and the words "Do you want $3.00 gas?"
and I can't help but think "This Taco Bell viral marketing has got to stop".

2026-10-03 13:23:56 UTC

Gonna be very hot today again (and every day next two weeks) so my son has cross country practice at 7am. I'm gonna take pepper and walk her, hopefully that keeps us all sane the rest of the day.

2026-10-03 04:20:46 UTC

Predicted overnight temps of 85F... yikes.

2026-10-01 13:32:38 UTC

Fediverse, the social media system for 40+ year old people who built the world wide web and regret it.

2026-10-01 02:53:18 UTC

My wife comes home and tells me the news is that a student at a Highland Park high school jumped off a balcony to try to escape another student who was attacking them, landed on concrete 20ft below and died... wtf is wrong with everyone?

2026-09-30 21:05:52 UTC

I been ballin' a shiny black gigabit router, been chipping up packets for the info-superhighway...
*Grateful Dead Noises*

2026-09-29 17:54:55 UTC

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It takes official inflation numbers by govt entities for granted. I personally doubt they well model peoples experience of the economy, particularly near the median income.

2026-09-27 16:08:21 UTC

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Girls in general but esp smart ones were very poorly treated back then.
@npub1ucv…5a8g @npub1zhv…zk5e

2026-09-27 15:12:55 UTC

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This is a common story actually. Incredible torturous boredom has produced many many dropouts (and addicts and etc). My son knows one at Blair. Hes really smart but just plays games on his phone all day long. The older brother of one of my sons main friends.
@npub1zhv…zk5e @npub1z3l…txvc

2026-09-27 14:58:47 UTC

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😅
Still, we accept you, one of us, one of us, one of us!
@npub1ucv…5a8g @npub1z3l…txvc

2026-09-27 14:35:15 UTC

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I sometimes think Mastodon is the social media system for people who did or should have skipped 1 or more years of high school 😅
@npub1z3l…txvc

2026-09-27 14:20:11 UTC

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Yep, its a concern. Unfortunately, most of my kids friends have left the school. A few to go to Pasadena High, A few to go to Muir. One of the reasons is the board threatening to close schools. Anyway as a result my son mostly hangs out with his friends on weekends anyway. He has a few friends at school but 5-6 fewer than 2 yrs ago.

2026-09-26 19:46:57 UTC

I was asking my sons guidance counselor about requirements for GED if he wanted to graduate early and start at city college etc. She was busy googling and reading the AI summary... If you want to know how the avg person views AI. This is it.

2026-09-25 05:44:01 UTC

Just found some sort of concerning thing on Peppers left haunch. Kinda could be a scab, or a viral induced skin thing, or kinda could be a skin cancer. Will assess again in the morning and may be taking her to the Vet. Will be pretty upset if its a cancer. So let's try to hope thats not it.

2026-09-23 18:57:21 UTC

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Also the most important aspect of git is the "detached head state"
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/321/877/357/369/069/original/a35d2640263fa136.png

2026-09-23 18:23:59 UTC

Ok, I'm going to watch a video on how to use Magit in emacs, but the first thing I want to make very clear is that regardless of the fact that the authors of the package want it to be pronounced like "Magic" but with a t, it obviously must be pronounced Ma-git like Renee Magritte because git is clearly for surrealists.

2026-09-23 14:55:16 UTC

When my kids were little and I was trying to load them into the car in their car seats I used to sing song...
Get on up...
I said a get on up...
Get on the seat....
Now they are old enough to understand the reference...
The true master plants dad jokes that pay off over decades.

2026-09-23 02:39:32 UTC

12000 steps today, walked the two dogs together twice today with no real difficulty. That is a huge difference from a couple weeks ago.
Pepper pups official royal title is now Robusta Caramel Macchiato III

2026-09-21 02:14:13 UTC

When I get older and my kids are living on their own, I want to buy an old ice cream truck, repaint it, and drive it around neighborhoods playing 80's hits... It's the music truck... *careless whisper intensifies*

2026-09-21 00:03:00 UTC

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This is international so its hegemony over global economic activity, business wise means in currency terms, and energy wise means in energy terms.
[@blair_fix](https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix )

2026-09-20 03:32:42 UTC

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build a 30 ft high A frame attach a winch and lower the box to the ground?

2026-09-18 00:57:28 UTC

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At least I have you weirdos to keep me from going sane.

2026-09-18 00:56:47 UTC

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Its been 50 mins since I got the first notification, finally got the second one where he went to the train for real. This is kinda crappy. i should have driven to the grocery store and back. didnt really sort out the issue until it was too late to do that... soooo just burning an hour here.

2026-09-18 00:38:40 UTC

I get a notification when my kids go to the metro station and that means if I leave a few mins later I will pick them up about as they arrive... so I got the notification and drove down to get my son, and it turns out his cross country team ran past the station... so false alarm. ive been waiting at the metro for 20 mins now... sigh

2026-09-17 22:44:56 UTC

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https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/288/802/160/745/215/original/f4799909c6fd9d78.jpg

2026-09-16 22:02:35 UTC

Jazz is dead y'all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JUjFN9AuFU

2026-09-16 19:58:05 UTC

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To follow up on my own question, here's one article I'll send him. What else you got?
https://medium.com/@michaelswengel/yes-your-mac-is-watching-you-6d1f25b6fa59

2026-09-16 19:56:45 UTC

So, I think we're all aware that phones collect a lot of data and are basically surveillance devices at this point. What do we know about surveillance in Windows and especially Apple Macintosh OS?
I know already about Windows shoving OneDrive down your throat, and snapshotting your screen every 3 seconds, and having a GUID checking in all the time online.
What's Apple up to? My son wants to know because he's being asked to use Macs at school and is concerned.
#infosec

2026-09-16 19:49:09 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/117282018692478148
Make my funk the g-funk I wants to get funked up.

2026-09-15 02:37:13 UTC

Amazing sky over the soccer training field.
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/272/728/815/796/373/original/04b996a66d696d4a.jpg

2026-09-11 23:24:38 UTC

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Also, ive done calculations of GDP / (CPI components you mention) and they produce the same kinds of shapes... so PPP is truly gamed because if you look at CPI components like rent, food at home, healthcare, and childcare and education the GDP would look very similar to what we calculate with commodities... you can do this at Fred.stluisfed.org pretty easily.
it makes me super suspicious.
[@blair_fix](https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix )

2026-09-11 22:39:32 UTC

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The fact that GDP PPP doesn't really correlate with consumer sentiment, and GDP/commodities does tells me their basket has to be cooked enough that it's decorrelated with "real income" because no-one says "my real purchase power went up a bunch. I hate this"

2026-09-11 22:33:19 UTC

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Whereas broad baskets are full of things heavily influenced by power, asymmetry of information, marketing, legal barriers to entry, etc etc. Plus questions of quality change through time and soforth are open to interpretation that allows for fudging stuff until you can show a nice 2% / yr official growth except during "recessions" which you can manufacture as needed to keep the charade up.

2026-09-11 22:30:04 UTC

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My theory is this, commodities are a super liquid and competitive international market, with no asymmetry of information, and the demand for these things is ubiquitous we chose things that you can throw a tennis ball and hit some of it no matter where you're standing basically. Stuff you interact with all day every day.

2026-09-11 22:28:12 UTC

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I'd have to check the code to be 100% sure, but my student hasn't set up a public repo yet. But the design is basically this, 1/3 weight of the commodities are basic materials Wood, iron ore, aluminum, copper, rubber, 1/3 weight of the commodities are energy (crude oil, natl gas, propane), and 1/3 of the commodities are human fuel (wheat, corn, vegetables, poultry)

2026-09-11 21:20:07 UTC

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The GDP/commodity data has a free scale parameter, so we made it so that US in 2000 has value = 1, which means log(1) = 0.
You can think of our measure as "ability to buy commodities divided by the ability of US citizens in 2000 to buy the same commodities"
whereas the GDP PPP is based on something like US "constant dollars" in 2015 or something. Take PPP and divide by the US value in 2000 and you'd put it on same scale. It's just a constant vertical shift in the Log version though.

2026-09-11 20:46:27 UTC

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The GDP PPP data always shows nice few percent growth every year for the developed countries. Is this basically lies told by govt employees who will lose their job if they don't fudge shit up to something kinda believable? I don't know. But what I know is that GDP_PPP has NEGATIVE relation with consumer sentiment. We've got some linear models showing this, but haven't put together the tables yet.

2026-09-11 20:43:53 UTC

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To get actually scaled sense of what's up, here's the log(gdp/commodity) data and also log(ppp) side by side, you can read growth rates off the graph here as the slope of a line fit through the data.
If you look at the major developed countries: GBR, DEU, USA you see there's been an overall trend of basically 0 growth for 25 years. Things dropped from 2000-2010, and then recovered a bit from 2010-2025 but not back to the level of yr 2000.
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/341/590/166/060/original/7e6636080cf0eb65.png

2026-09-11 20:39:46 UTC

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These graphs use z-transformed versions of each data series, so they're mean 0 and 1 standard deviation in vertical spread... so basically we're just comparing the shapes. In case you're confused why they all seem to have the same scale.

2026-09-11 20:38:30 UTC

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Last image upload: USA
The PPP GDP basically is meaningless right? It's strongly negatively correlated with what people think is going on, while the commodity price normalization is basically sitting on top of the sentiment data like a cat in a box.
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/328/149/707/458/original/60b1f479f1dca84b.png

2026-09-11 20:37:09 UTC

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More graphs of the countries (limits per post are 4 graphs)
The pattern you see is that the red line (standard PPP GDP) is more or less poorly or even negatively correlated with consumer sentiment, while yellow (our GDP/commodity) moves strongly with consumer sentiment, so that our GDP strongly reflects people's "experience" of the economy at least in these big western type countries.
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/297/544/130/249/original/59dde0c782861e6e.png
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/317/813/597/821/original/0a2b590c9eab1767.png
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/317/810/024/197/original/a4bb802aad2db917.png
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/317/814/200/474/original/3b186aa7f197cfb6.png

2026-09-11 20:29:27 UTC

All right friends. My student and I finally put together something we're pretty confident about. Here's some plots... In Yellow is our dimensionless GDP measure. In Blue is OECD consumer confidence data. In Red is standard GDP PPP data.
I'm cherry picking some of the best fits here, but they are OUTSTANDING and some major countries.
Belgium, Spain, France, UK, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Portugal, USA
(followups below and descriptions of the general results rather than alt-text)
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/283/259/682/823/original/082b943f7f468650.png
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/284/710/521/819/original/001f32783d2310f5.png
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/292/386/181/752/original/a755d41061c085ae.png
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/254/292/855/018/596/original/8d42c468a1981f60.png

2026-09-10 04:53:21 UTC

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Yeah we topped out at about 104F in Pasadena area, but the feels like stat said 109.5F I guess due to humidity.

2026-09-10 04:20:09 UTC

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CELLULAR data? fucking NO are you serious?

2026-09-09 15:27:05 UTC

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If growth is entirely a story about offshoring and exploitation of labor while materials have been getting more expensive for decades, then its just a story of colonialism all over again. except this time its called "NAFTA" or whatever.
we've all seen the articles about click farms in Bangladesh right? how much "GDP" is just people creating lies online actively harming consumers globally?
[@blair_fix](https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix )

2026-09-09 15:22:27 UTC

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If you want to build a new roof or a new house, you quickly run up against serious material prices issues... If you want a new wordrobe, the prices are controlled by slave labor in Bangladesh and Vietnam. there are many more people buying fast fashion than building houses, so the fashion and other consumer goods are dominant in PPP calcs.
[@blair_fix](https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix )

2026-09-09 15:19:42 UTC

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My guess is that the part where they say its based on final products (consumer goods and services) is the part that matters. Consumer goods and services have prices more dependent on power and asymmetry of information and labor costs and rent than do commodities. in other words, consumer prices are more bullshit than commodity prices.
[@blair_fix](https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix )

2026-09-09 15:17:17 UTC

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Indeed, the PPP calculation is described here...
https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/methodology-calculation
Economists will do anything rather than ~~go to therapy~~ use dimensionless numbers
[@blair_fix](https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix )

2026-09-09 14:25:40 UTC

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I'm being honest here, this COULD be a coding error, my student put it together and we are scheduled to walk through it Thursday together. But I dont think it will be. my general "sense" in the last 26 years is that everyone is on average poorer in terms of real *material* purchasing power, because GDP has gone more and more towards rent payments.
tagging [@blair_fix](https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix ) and @npub1z3l…txvc because they may find this interesting.

2026-09-09 14:25:36 UTC

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People need to eat, so wheat and rice and things are gonna be critical economic inputs for every country, and we need to do things, so energy/fuel is required. And if you look around you things are made of wood, steel, copper, aluminum...
According to this graph, if you need to buy a chunk of each of these commodities, a chunk that would have cost $1000 USD each in 2000, you have been poorer and less able to buy those chunks at every point in time since 2000 ish.

2026-09-09 14:25:32 UTC

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Traditional techniques say that "real GDP" in the US is at maybe 2x what it was in 2000, but my index says the US can only buy maybe 80% as much raw materials as it could in 2000.
Raw materials are both a competitive international market, and fairly immune to bullshitting... if you buy a ton of wheat or aluminum or copper you get exactly the same product in 2026 as in 2000. And everything we need economically requires raw materials. if not wood, aluminum, or copper then at least energy / fuel

2026-09-09 14:25:22 UTC

This is preliminary data, could have bugs and might be easily improved by pulling in better data etc. But the differences were so stark that I thought I'd let you guys think about them as well... Here is side by side the traditional purchasing power parity GDP (on right) for some major countries, vs the purchasing power of several important raw materials in equal weighted basket version my student and I cooked up on left. (see alt text for more info, ignore data before 2000)
#economics
https://mastodon.sdf.org/system/media_attachments/files/117/241/539/468/377/054/original/1d52a001db9e6ade.png

2026-09-08 03:53:27 UTC

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Good luck finding one in the market. theyre all spyware enabled now. I think you can probably get some commercial signage device, but it'll be $6500 or something.
@npub1zhv…zk5e

2026-09-08 03:48:46 UTC

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The linked message suggested it might be accessing things like xfinity access points etc, fortunately I dont see any like that around here. but its pretty obnoxious that I have to even think about that.
@npub1z3l…txvc

2026-09-08 03:42:08 UTC

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enabled client history logging, and will see who is using my guest network over the next few days... hope the device stays disconnected.

2026-09-08 03:20:26 UTC

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Yuck. Mine is TCL so I guess I can hope? but i should probably check if its sneaking on my guest network, and block its MAC

2026-09-07 19:40:19 UTC

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Family members try to be helpful by running laundry but then forget to shift it and it sits at 95F for a few hours and rots... ugh. Also running clean washer cycles with bleach every week or so to make sure the washer itself doesnt smell like a sewer.

2026-09-07 19:37:29 UTC

Annoying things... i seem to have a low level cold, probably only a couple days of annoying nose and throat and ear itchy and congestion issues but still annoying. Also, I woke up with some kind of back spasm and I can't easily seem to stretch it out... Also I have a basket of clean folded laundry and a nontrivial fraction of it smells like sewage...

2026-09-05 04:37:24 UTC

What I need is help from my anarchist vermont librarian @npub1prs…eh8y (and any of you other peeps)
My son has a friend at school who is interested in the questions about the industrial revolution, the Luddites, and unfortunately has spent some time reading The Unabomber manifesto. So my son wants to move his friend away from the Unabomber ideas towards more sane leftist critiques and histories of industrial revolution etc. What's good books about Luddites, and history of the Ind. Rev. ?

2026-09-04 23:28:30 UTC

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"come view the eclipse projected on a wall through my safe eclipse projection system with my refracting telescope" type of anarchism... Anarcho-Dad more than Anarcho-Punk.
Let me know if you need to figure out your malfunctioning pond filtration system.

2026-09-04 23:28:28 UTC

With my generally anarchist attitudes even before identifying as an anarchist, people have generally expected me to be Burning Man friendly. And while I'm generally OK with people going to BM and doing whatever, its just not for me just like piercings and tattoos and Mohawks aren't for me. Love my punk fellows, but like, not my thing. I'm more of the "do you need me to come help you with your failing well water system" and "would you like to learn how to safely arc weld" and

2026-09-04 21:06:41 UTC

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Definitely start with a backflow preventer valve on all the lines that go to outdoor places (hose bibs, sprinkler systems, the washing machine etc) this should be installed basically before the line exits the house area, so its easy to maintain, and so the backpressure is generally greater keeping the valve closed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backflow_prevention_device
Another thing you could try is to place a pressure tank near your house, so the pressure in the lines stays relatively constant

2026-09-01 23:29:09 UTC

I'm not sure what's different, possibly that it's not so crazy hot so the dogs could go in and out more easily, but they've both been fed, and there's been no desperate play-fighting from pepper-pup. I even sent my work on the window survey off to the forensic engineering company. Kids will be coming home, then I have to go out to drop N for soccer practice. I may go to Griffith park for a hike with the dogs. Every day things get a little more "normal" with them.

2026-09-01 15:26:46 UTC

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What exactly does "Its California but still good" mean? 🤣

2026-09-01 01:35:53 UTC

My son, on the way home from the metro station: Well, I deleted my Google Account today.

2026-08-29 18:28:22 UTC

There's 1M active fedi users or so. If we all pledged $1 a month we could have $12M/yr of development of slop-free microkernel based OS with capabilities security and userspace daemons that lots of us could hack on. Of course, it'd help to get a lot of consensus on the project, but also a bunch of microkernel stuff is just out there as a baseline to start from.
It'd also work if 10% of us pledged $10/mo

2026-08-29 11:49:04 UTC

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I have no doubt at some point, like in 1915, that was a common enough meaning, so the OED is gonna list it, its just not a common enough meaning now that for example any of my kids or their friends would know wtf youre talking about.

2026-08-29 11:32:22 UTC

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I dont think most native speakers would agree with that statement. Distracted means having your attention taken away from something. Distraught means upset about something. Being distraught can be a cause of being distracted but they aren't synonyms at least in modern english.

2026-08-27 03:50:28 UTC

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OK, so how about "The things they carried"?
@npub1prs…eh8y

2026-08-27 03:50:00 UTC

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*Peace unless theres a 70s porno version I dont know about
@npub1prs…eh8y

2026-08-27 03:35:22 UTC

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Lolita is a seriously problematic novel. Your sense of irony has to be fully developed to actually understand that novel.
@npub1prs…eh8y

2026-08-27 03:24:01 UTC

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I guess maybe theres a third... the dominant culture is broken may as well do drugs and sex and rock and roll and drive fast and die young... kinda my least favorite.
@npub1prs…eh8y

2026-08-27 03:22:45 UTC

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So, yes these are books about people in a countercultural situation, and also its been decades since I read Catcher or The Outsiders, but I feel like there are two kinds of countercultural novels... one which basically says "look here's this alternative culture, isnt it a total mess, stay in school and get a job" and ones which have more of a "the dominant culture is broken and what are we gonna do about it". I think Catcher, and Trout Fishing in America are #2
@npub1prs…eh8y

2026-08-26 20:49:02 UTC

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It is pretty. I dont know how you'd do the "easy version" of that though.

2026-08-26 03:58:57 UTC

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So I guess we should put Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five in the list and maybe Norman Mailers The Naked and the Dead, but all of them are focused on WWII, theres gotta be a punk era novel, 1975-1985 right? or was it all in graphic novel form? Tank Girl and such?

2026-08-26 03:37:26 UTC

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so if I compare Catcher to they synopsis of Less than Zero though, Caulfield is a dropout from the wealthy world due to its inauthentic bullshit nature, while Less than Zero sounds more like a warning to young men to avoid the path of depravity and stay in school and conform because the alternative is self immolation. Caulfield is kind of a proto-punk while Clay is like some kind of visitor into an underworld of drugs and prostitution.

2026-08-26 03:31:07 UTC

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Holy shit, the summary of Less than Zero is truly depraved. I had not heard of that novel. Also thank you to the librarians of Fediverse and Jess in particular.

2026-08-26 03:24:31 UTC

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Maybe it should be compared to Trout Fishing In America (1971) which I read ages ago, but seems more like a the 1970s absurdist version.
Was there an 80s or 90s equivalent?

2026-08-26 03:19:08 UTC

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i guess its called "On the Road" for a reason, maybe it should have been called "Ike's Pleasure Palace"

2026-08-26 03:17:59 UTC

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Reading the Wikipedia summary I guess I know why I found it impenetrable. Sure its about people who reject societal norms, but its also about people who basically accept modernity as a source of new forms of hedonism rather than any search for an alternative meaning, at least thats what it sounds like. I feel like the modern equivalent would be some neocyberpunk thing where everyone spends their whole lives smoking weed and having what they think of as deep convos with AI chatbots?

2026-08-26 03:09:44 UTC

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I tried to read On The Road in high school but found it kind of impenetrable, I should read it now.

2026-08-26 03:08:55 UTC

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Holden Caulfield is one of the first literary rich kid dropouts who focuses on and rejects the fake plastic advertising invented culture of the post war era. He has no idea how hes gonna make it in the world he lives in, but hes pretty sure its not by doing what his parents want him to do.

2026-08-26 03:05:23 UTC

My kids are getting back into school so of course now I'm having conversations about the cultural milieu surrounding the release if The Catcher In The Rye in 1951, the rise of the "Beat Generation", and the eventual development of the Hippies and Yippies of the 60s and 70s. Teachers, you can't just drop a book on kids and not explain its context and eventual importance (I think the teacher is actually pretty good, but probably doesn't go far enough for me).

2026-08-25 03:30:06 UTC

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We definitely dont need more dogs! But they are doing SOOO well so thats really nice. I was even able to do like 3-4 hrs of actual data analysis work.

2026-08-24 23:39:43 UTC

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An enabler

2026-08-21 13:21:39 UTC

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My college girlfriend had grandparents there. it was sad to see the state of the town and the people living in it. Must have been about 1995 ish.

2026-08-15 15:36:27 UTC

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Down here all dogs suffer. its not OK to walk dogs above like 80F. Theres definitely what we sometimes call "dog time" down here... 8am and like 7pm

2026-08-15 15:29:50 UTC

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That is a chonker! We have a Pyrenees near us that is always at a gate but theres no cute sunburst in the gate.

2026-08-13 23:30:05 UTC

The very simple process of reading the average temp across multiple sensors in the zone and then adjusting the thermostat calibration to make the thermostat think its local temp is equal to the zone average temp has MASSIVELY improved the temperature control in the house. I can't believe I didnt do this earlier. As a check I looked at how much the calibration delta changed through time, it ranges from +1 to -1.5 degree C, so its quite notable comfort wise. It also fluctuates constantly.

2026-08-11 16:20:05 UTC

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💯
did not mean to exclude literature research in any way.
@npub1enq…ycu8

2026-08-11 00:06:29 UTC

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There isn't a reason why they *have* to go together, but I think the people who tend to be interested in research also tend to be interested in teaching people about things?
But yeah, it'd be totally fine to do just one and not the other.